Read Time:1 Minute, 59 Second
A law firm is curious whether the health insurer could be held liable for compensation to their clients due to the recent hacking.
One of the massive data breaches happened weeks ago, compromising more than 9.7m Australians. The hackers targeted a Medibank employee’s credentials to have their way in. The worst part of this havoc is that the client’s data was gradually uploaded into the dark web.
Maurice Blackburn, one of the biggest law firms in Australia, said on Sunday that it was also investigating a legal claim against Medibank. Its principal lawyer Andrew Watson said, “Companies that hold their customer’s sensitive health information have an important obligation to make sure that information is safeguarded, commensurate with the sensitivity of that data.”
“As custodians of customer’s personal health information, Medibank has a heightened responsibility to put in place greater safeguards to secure the personal and health claim information it collected from its customers, including appropriate security and monitoring systems to protect against unauthorised access or disclosure of that data,” he added.
After some investigations, the federal police picked pieces of crumbs leading to REvil, a notorious Russian ransomware gang. The said dark web blog is pointing to the said group.
The hackers ask for 10 million US dollars from the health insurer to shut the leakage. However, with the government’s help, Medibank refuses to do so. Yet, the hackers are triggered. As a result, they released a confidential abortion case from the data.
Clare O’Neil, Cyber Security Minister, said it was the right thing to do. The government has yet to rule out enacting new legislation that would make it illegal for businesses to pay ransom to hackers.
“The idea that we are going to trust these people to delete data that they have taken off and may have copied a million times is just frankly silly,” she told ABC’s Insiders.
“That was the right decision. And we are standing strong as a country against this. We don’t want to fuel that business model, and that’s what happens when ransoms are paid.”
The government will first look at several “quick win” reforms before tackling the “big policy questions” that require consultations.
The federal police are said to conduct a “hack the hackers” operation. The standing cybercrime operation will be composed of 100 officers from the Australian Federal Police and Australian Signals Directorate.
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0
